A week ago I wrote about throwing the television away. Maki on DoshDosh goes one better - listing some projected costs of owning a TV, and breaking these down into:
- the sunk cost of the TV itself, and peripherals, cable bills, and so on, and
- the opportunity cost of not doing something meaningful with your TV time as either a self-employed businessperson or an entrepreneur.
What do you think? What would you be doing that has real meaning in your life if you didn’t have a TV?
Hi, I’m reading you via the Australian Blogs Community at Bumpzee, on the RSS feed. Just dropping by to welcome you to the Australian Blogs Community, and to let you know I have just updated the Australian Blogs Community HTML links list file to include your blog, if you want to put it on your blog you can get a copy of it here -
http://fraudstars.info/~snoskred/aussieatoz.txt - A to Z
http://fraudstars.info/~snoskred/images/title.jpg - Z to A (The down-under version!)
The list is updated weekly to include new blogs.
In case you didn’t know, anytime you post the first 250 characters go out on the RSS feed, so I’ll be reading more from you soon.
and I’ve updated my sidebar to the new list, so I’m linking to you now. I also mention you on Sunday in my weekly wrap up post. 
Once again, Welcome to the Australian Blogs Community!
For me, I need the TV in order to take the occasional break from everything, including blogging..
Snoskred -
http://www.snoskred.org/
Hi Snoskred,
thanks for inclusion in the list, and thanks heaps for the inbound link goodness to come
I take movie breaks - Ringo the Jack Russell and I sometimes stop what we’re doing and watch a movie on a Sunday afternoon, especially when Helen (Ringo’s Mum) is too busy to allocate domestic chores. Apart from that, and Spicks’n'Specks, the TV is a bit of a distraction.
Best regards, Andrew
I think the Maki misses is the intrinsic value of entertainment (assuming your TV is not an old-style idiot box, but something worthwhile like a time-shift capable media-type centre). Maki might as well say “don’t go to the movies” or “don’t have fun” because your time could be better spent making money.
Am I being too Australian here when I think I “work to live”, rather than the Americainism I once heard regarding “living to work”?
M
I have just recently moved away from a residential situation where (due to reception issues, living next door to a major hospital) I did not get the chance to watch TV on a regular basis. Therefore, I detoxed myself from all the shows I was so addicted to that I could not bare to miss a single episode. Result: now, I can be more discerning about what I watch, I’m not in the habit of watching endless hours of TV, and I used my time in that year more productively to socialise and do other things I enjoy.
Breaking dependence on TV isn’t about having a *less* enjoyable life, it’s about having a better life, a more fulfilling life. So I agree wholeheartedly.
- Aurelius
Hi Aurelius,
thank you for your comment. I agree - it is about the setting of priorities and the breaking of habits (or the forming of new ones).
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Matt,
thank you for your comment
I think that Maki is probably thinking very “Television 1.0″ - even still, for most people, that is their experience - the TV is not an aid to thought so much as an excuse not to think.
The work-to-live/live-to-work dichotomy (Maki’s second expense category) probably only applies to the hard-core intra/entrapreneurial types, the driven (or insane, depending on your perspective!)
I am certainly so afflicted, and I am guessing so is Maki. I don’t think it is an Australian/American thing - a lot of the American bloggers I know are questioning their work/blog/life balance at the moment too.
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Andrew
I think with the growing availability of online content and the steady decline in the quality of tv shows, television as we know it (particularly free to air) is on a rapid decline to irrelevance. P2P and streaming technology is forcing broadcasters to re-think their strategies and markets - take for example Joost, IceTV, ipTV, TiVo and devices such as the Beyonwiz DP-S1.
Personally, my tv time has decreased dramatically over the past year. The only shows I watch regularly now are Spicks’N'Specks and Top Gear (and Weeds thanks to U-Torrent;).
FT
Hi FT,
thank you for your comment.
I am not sure that TV quality has declined so much as the human race is evolving past the need for mindless soap/Opra entertainment - and that the current mainstream offerings look sad because while they are being delivered in digital surround-sound they are still 90% piffle.
Some of us are still watching the box, but more are watching what-we-want-when-we-want through streaming and timeshifting. The DVD market has seen their own medium term demise and is becoming a lot more competitive (says he, happy that he just scored a copy of The Corpse Bride for AUD10.00, yay).
I do try and catch Top Gear when I think of it - a time-shifty TiVO-esque setup would be ideal for me, or perhaps we could convince SBS to go the ABC route and make more stuff download/streamable.
Best regards, Andrew